Humanism - General

(3,124 words)

1. History of humanism. Humanism as the deliberate effort to justify the Renaissance arose in the 14th and 15th centuries as an intellectual movement among the nobility, especially the merchant aristocracy of the Italian city-states. Within the traditional framework of the medieval order, this new social class did not regard itself as bound to any existing pattern of life and could therefore develop its courtly patrician style of life into an original and a…